The present invention relates to remanufacturing and modifying electrophotographic toner cartridges, and more particularly to techniques for modifying an electrophotographic toner cartridge intended to operate in one type of imaging device to operate in another type of imaging device.
In the imaging industry, there is a growing market for the remanufacture and refurbishing of various types of imaging components such as toner cartridges, ink cartridges, magnetic rollers, seals, and the like. Toner cartridges, once spent, are unusable for their originally intended purpose. Without a refurbishing process, they would simply be discarded, even though the cartridge itself may still have potential life. As a result, techniques have been developed specifically to address this issue. These processes may entail, for example, the disassembly of the various structures of the cartridge, replacing toner, cleaning, adjusting or replacing any worn components and reassembling the cartridge.
The differences between printer cartridges for various types of printing devices may only be slight or subtle. In many instances it may only be an indentation or protuberance in the body of the cartridge. In other cases it may be not only a physical attribute of the body of the cartridge, but also the addition of a communications device. Certain style cartridges may be plentiful and relatively inexpensive simply because of certain factors such as the supply in the market or initial cost while other style cartridges may not be available in quantity or too expensive for cost effective use in remanufacturing. The easiest and most economic solution would be to simply convert the inexpensive style cartridges into the more costly style cartridge in order to meet this market demand.